


Vettriano

by Ship_theboybands



Series: Lola Who Is A Girl [2]
Category: 5 Seconds of Summer (Band)
Genre: Drabble, Gen, M/M, prose, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-13
Updated: 2015-08-13
Packaged: 2018-04-14 11:01:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4562052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ship_theboybands/pseuds/Ship_theboybands
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>this is the painting btw http://metro.co.uk/2013/03/18/gallery-top-10-most-popular-artworks-as-chinese-girl-painting-goes-on-sale-3548251/ay40060477the-singing-butle/</p>
<p>part two of lola who is a girl! i might continue this series!! (sorry that this is not what anyone had in mind as a sequel)</p></blockquote>





	Vettriano

There is a print of a Vettriano painting on the kitchen wall which five year old Michael stares at while he eats his cereal.

The couple have light skin and he can’t see their faces but he knows they’re happy because they are dancing. 

It is raining, in the painting, and the lady is wearing a beautiful red dress and the butler and the maid are each holding an umbrella high above their head.

His mother smiles when she sees the painting, looks at his father in a secret sort of way, and whenever it rains Michael thinks about dancing and twirling and an endless, swirling red. 

Michael feels sad and he does not know why and it does not go away.

 

There is a print of a Vettriano painting on the kitchen wall which fifteen year old Michael glares at after the first time he kisses a girl. 

The couple have light skin and he can’t see their faces but he knows they’re happy because they are dancing so gracefully. Their bodies are fit in just the way they ought, a picture of ease and elegance. 

He thinks of clinking teeth and apologies and the way it had felt like a declaration, life chewing at his attempts to be square and regular and spitting them back out again.

It is raining, in the painting, and Michael can’t tear his eyes away from the imperfect scene and from the way they are happy anyway. He itches and aches from something both inside and outside at once.

It had all been so slightly off centre, like someone had gone into his bedroom and moved all his things around just a little, just enough for him to know something wasn’t quite right. He had felt like he’d been watching it, like his fumbling hands and her furrowed brows were a motion picture, like he’d arrived to the premier in a tux and she in a long red dress.

He feels spiteful, wants to steal his mother's secret smile just to feel it, wants the girl to cry rainwater tears so he’s not the only one.

It feels like rain when he steps into the shower, and wraps his arms around himself. He steps forwards, then backwards, like a lonely, ugly dance. He sees red, red, red.

He feels horrendously empty, or perhaps too full, and it does not ever seem to end.

 

There is a print of a Vettriano painting on the kitchen wall which seventeen year old Michael glances at with vague recollection when he falls back to the nest and his parents after the first tour.  
Everything seems both irrelevant and dreadfully important but instead of thinking about it he gazes at the lady in the painting.

His mother hides no secrets when she smiles at him, she is not trying to pretend she is not worried.

Michael smiles, a little bit, at the dancing couple and the rain and the ridiculous servants with their umbrellas. He wishes he could see their faces. He wishes he could bare to look at his own.

 

There is a print of a Vettriano painting on the kitchen wall at which nineteen year old Lola glances sheepishly to avoid each of her parents faces while they scan her like an important document.

When she falls into them, as they hold her, she closes her eyes to the dancers and laughs as her father twirls her, and they twirl and twirl and twirl.

She feels like the picture of ease.

 

There is a print of a Vettriano painting on the kitchen wall which twenty one year old Lola shows to Luke like she’s showing him an old and torn patchwork of her very being.

He looks close at the couple as they dance, a most small and secret smile slipping along his lips like red silk onto skin.

“The red dress,” Luke nods turning to Lola. Luke looks handsome as always in his suit. Lola is wearing red.

Lola’s parents bustle down the stairs and into the kitchen, spot them looking at the painting.

It is a tired and cheesy and beautiful painting. There are no faces but you can tell they are happy because they’re dancing.

The four of them stand in the kitchen and look at it for a moment.

If someone were to take a photograph of them in this moment, Luke and Lola leaning together like magnetic bonds, Lola's parents behind them like shadows or angels, it would be composed like a painting.

**Author's Note:**

> this is the painting btw http://metro.co.uk/2013/03/18/gallery-top-10-most-popular-artworks-as-chinese-girl-painting-goes-on-sale-3548251/ay40060477the-singing-butle/
> 
> part two of lola who is a girl! i might continue this series!! (sorry that this is not what anyone had in mind as a sequel)


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